Top 10 Best Tactical Players of All Time

Define tactician. Fischer wasn't a speculative player but could calculate the hell out of a position (the only thing Botvinnik allowed after Fischer won the title). Fischer just didn't play wildly (as a rule). People still wonder about game #1 of the Spassky match in 1972.

This is just flat out wrong. Fischer was a charter member of the Pawnsnatcher's Anonymous club. He routinely grabbed his opponent's sacs and held on to win. One of his most famous lines, the Najdorf Poisoned Pawn variation, is an excellent example of his chess philosophy, at least as Black. Grab material, hang on to the endgame, and win. His chess philosophy as White was a bit different: he adhered to classical principles as White and often won in the style of Capa rather than the style of Alekhin or Kasparov.

But today's top players are more tactical than most of those players on the list. Caruana, Aronian, Topalov, and Nakamura all relish complex tactical battles and can work out deep calculations at least as well as Tal, perhaps even better than Tal! That's not blasphemy. Among his contemporaries, Keres and Bronstein may have been better at tactics than Tal was. Tal's tactical vision was good, but what set him apart was his imagination.

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